Rolling around and moaning (Keppel, Pumpkin)


The buoy we took on North Keppel island, provided us with a particularly rolly night - a reoccurring nocturnal feature at the moment. This has us both quite happy to drop the mooring lines first thing and head round the corner for a (hopefully) calmer and flatter anchoring spot. We make our way round to a gap in the reef off the beach at Pumpkin Island. Initial thoughts after dropping and setting the anchor are good. I spent the afternoon exploring the local beach and rocks, finding a scale of turtle shell, some sand dollars and lots of bleached reef in the shallows.
Sadly the initial impression of the anchorage did not equate to a flat calm night - more howling and rolling kept the ongoing overtired and aching vibe on the boat going for another day. Upped anchor again the next morning (Good Friday I think), to once again search for the elusive perfect anchoring spot to get some decent rest. This time, off North Keppel Island, a picturesque spot, but yet another place where the constant side to side rolling of the boat makes for an uncomfortable time.
The weather during these last few days has been marked by mainly cloudy skies, occasional sun bursts, and a new meteorological term I’ve just come up with: ‘Borstal squalls’: where for a few moments the rain comes down hard and the howling wind increases giving us a borstalesque ‘short sharp shock’.
Upped anchor from there this morning. We’ve got a 40nm day in front of us to Pearl Island, we should be there by sunset.. well that estimate was very wrong: a large following sea and decent strong wind on our beam and hind quarter throughout the morning, had us arriving into our new home a little after 1pm. Averaging a better than decent 7knots for the journey. It was actually quite a hairy ride, requiring hand-steering for the majority of the way (neither the autopilot or the Hydrovane were coping too well with the large rolling surf conditions). I’m now writing this with sore shoulders in what we’d hoped would be a calm little anchorage tucked away from the swell. That was what we’d hoped…
I’m starting to realise that the East Coast of Australia has a lot in common with the East coast of Spain.. lots and lots of uncomfortable rolly anchorages, the only difference being we can’t swim here to cool off - sharks, crocodiles and stingers ruining that idea. Better get used to it I suppose.
Woke (once again) tired, aching and grumpy - sorry if you’re reading this hoping for sunshine and rainbows, just at the moment I’m not really feeling too gleeful.


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